by Alison Kent
She stopped just outside Casper’s doorway, her hand on the frame, her head on her hand, her head filled with a roulette wheel of emotions—dizzying, stunning, dangerous—rolling over her. He lay on his back, a forearm tossed over his eyes, his chest bare, the covers riding low on his hips. White tape wrapped his midsection. A strip of his boxer briefs showed white above his yellow sheet, and one foot poked out from the bottom.
She stared for longer than she should have, taking him in, all of him—the rumpled bed, the jumble of dead cell phone and keys and change on the top of his dresser, his belt on the floor, curled like a snake around the saucer of his belt buckle. His clothes in a dirty pile smelling of horse and sweat.
“I’m awake,” he said, reaching one hand toward her, his eyes closed, his voice low and raspy.
“I wasn’t sure. You look so…peaceful.”
“You’re not looking close enough, sweetheart,” he said, crooking his finger.
She stopped at the edge of the bed and whispered, “I’m not here to have sex.”
He laughed, groaned, his hand going to his bandages. “Shit. Don’t make me laugh.”
“Guess that means you weren’t inviting me close to get naked.”
“I don’t even want to think about you naked.” He groaned again. “Shit. There it goes.” Another groan, and his hand slipped under the sheet to his groin. “Taking care of this is going to kill me.”
“Why don’t you not think about me naked and there won’t be anything to take care of?” she asked, then crossed from the bed to the window, pulling back the curtain.
She looked down on the ranch yard, where Kevin lay between Bing and Bob, his chin on his paws, all three staring into the pasture beyond the corral as if waiting for something to happen. Seconds later it did, as Dax and Boone topped a distant rise on horseback.
At that, the trio slipped like greased pigs through the corral slats, Kevin lumbering to keep up with the border collies as they sprinted to greet the boys. Amazing, she mused, letting the curtain fall. Even Clay’s dog had settled in, belonging.
Behind her, Casper grunted. “You could take care of it for me. It’ll still kill me, but at least I’ll die a happy man.”
She turned to meet his gaze, but found his eyes closed instead. “Clay’s coming up in a few with something to eat. Chili with cheese and crackers.”
“Thanks, though that bucket of water’s not quite cold enough. Got another?”
“The kitchen looks amazing,” she offered, happy to keep both their minds off what lay—or stood—beneath his sheets. “I’d threatened Boone with hiring a maid, but I see you took care of that nicely.”
“No,” he said, turning his head on his pillow to look at her. “I found a runaway squatting in my house and hid him from the authorities and put him to work like a slave. There’s the cold water I needed. Problem solved. At least one of my many.”
The man was going to break her heart, if he didn’t first break his neck. “You don’t have to do this, you know. Work for Royce. End up injured even worse.”
“What?” he groaned. “I’m supposed to admit where I got the funds for the house? Not that anyone’s going to believe what I’m making is enough for the renovations.”
Faith remembered Arwen commenting on what Royce was paying. “So you’re risking your life to provide a cover story?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m risking my life.”
“You got thrown from a horse who then nearly trampled you.”
“How do you know what happened anyway?”
“I have eyes and ears everywhere helping me protect my investment.”
“You mean you have Boone,” he said, grimacing as he shifted to sit.
“Here,” she said, seeing no need to correct him. She offered her arm for him to use as a lever, then tucked his pillows behind him. “Your sheets do smell good.”
“You roll around in them with me for a while, they’ll smell even better.”
He never quit, did he? “This after saying me giving you a hand would kill you?”
“Yeah. Probably not a good idea.” He pulled his summer-weight blanket higher on his hips. “And you can thank Clay for the sheets. He’s been keeping all the laundry done around here.”
“Good for him.”
Casper nodded. “And the boy can cook. I think I’ve gained ten pounds.”
“The chili smelled amazing.”
“He’s a regular Rick Bayless.”
That made her smile. “You know who Rick Bayless is?”
He snorted. “Only because Clay told me when I walked in on him watching One Plate at a Time.”
“Watch out, he’ll be digging a pit in the ranch yard to cook a pig.”
“I’m a cattleman. He’d better be cooking a cow.”
She smiled at that. “How long are you going to be laid up with the ribs?”
“I’ll be back in the saddle tomorrow.”
Typical. “I have a hard time believing those are Dr. Pope’s orders.”
“Fuck Dr. Pope. I mean, don’t fuck Dr. Pope. Fuck me if you’re going to fuck anyone.”
“Casper!” She covered his mouth with her hand and whispered, “Clay’ll be here any minute.” He rolled his eyes, but nodded, so she let him go and moved to sit on the foot of the bed.
“Dr. Pope wants me in bed longer than I can afford to be here.”
She cocked her head. “How much do you think you can get done in your condition? Wouldn’t it be better to take the days than to make things worse?”
“The ribs are broken, Faith. They can’t get more broken.”
“No, but they can not heal.”
“You worry too much.”
“You don’t worry at all.”
“Now that’s not true. I worry it’s going to be too long before I can get back to doing you.” He stopped, cleared his throat, and added, “To doing your list. The things from the house. I know you’ve still got several for me to look at.”
Good lord. The man didn’t need to worry about jerking off killing him because she was going to do that. Just as soon as Clay, who was hovering uncertainly in the doorway, left the room.
“Here’s the chili,” he said, lifting the tray he held, his gaze shifting between the two of them.
“Dang, that smells good. I could eat this stuff every day.” Casper nodded for the boy to come into the room, then nodded toward his nightstand. “Just put it there.”
Clay did, backed away, dusting his hands together. “I’ll make another pot, but I used the last of the cumin in this one. And I brought up the rest of the crackers, and some cheese. We’re almost out of that, too. I put both on the grocery list.”
While Casper grimaced, wiggling against the headboard, Faith said, “Why don’t Clay and I go to Nathan’s and pick up y’all’s groceries? One less thing for you to worry about doing.”
“You don’t need to do that,” he said, frowning.
Frowning because he didn’t want her spending more of her money on him. “I know I don’t need to. I want to. The boys just rode in, so you won’t be alone.”
“You want to go now? Who’s going to feed me?”
She rolled her eyes. “You can feed yourself while I feed myself. Then after Clay and the boys eat, I can clean up while he gets his list together.” She turned to Clay, who stood half in and half out of the room. “Sound good?” He nodded. “Then it’s settled,” she said, turning back to Casper as the boy loped down the stairs.
“Don’t get used to this,” he said, spooning up a bite after she’d handed him his bowl.
“Get used to what? Clay’s cooking?”
“Getting your way.”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
“Too often it seems. Not sure why I’m so off my game these days.” He crushed a handful of crackers on top of his chili, added almost as much shredded cheese. “I blame you. I haven’t been myself since—” And then he stopped, as if hit by a realization that didn’t make him part
icularly happy.
“You were saying?” she pressed, because she was tickled.
“I let you take scissors to me. I don’t let women take scissors to me.”
“Don’t forget the razor,” she reminded him, too late to bite back the words.
His eyes heated, his pulse in his throat pounded, his cock rose to tent the sheet between them. The room grew still, and they both left their spoons in their bowls, and neither one dared breathe and break the beautiful tension binding them.
When the kitchen door slammed beneath them and Dax hollered for Clay, she found enough of her voice to whisper, “Casper—”
He cut her off with a shake of his head. “I changed my mind. I want you to take Clay to the store. Now would be a very good time.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
“GODDAMMIT.” CASPER FLUNG his newly reconnected phone across the ballroom floor, where it shattered against the stone hearth, wincing at the pull in his ribs and the explosion of electronics and glass. He still wanted to throttle Faith for the reconnection, her and her goddamn money, except who the hell knew how long he would’ve had to wait for this particular bad news otherwise?
She’d been halfway out the door, on her way to the kitchen to meet John Massey, but stopped and spun toward him. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
“That was Becky Dixon at the sheriff’s office.” He took a breath, jammed his hands to his hips, ignored the kick drum throb in his midsection. “Clay’s been arrested.”
“What?”
“Shoplifting. And driving without a license. Seems he took the ranch pickup to town and stole a jar of cumin from Nathan’s.” The boom, boom, boom was impossible to ignore. He screwed up his eyes and groaned. “What the hell is cumin, anyway?”
“It’s a spice. Or an herb. For the chili.”
“Jesus.” He looked at her, her frown, the lines of worry at the corners of her eyes, her suit and shoes and pantyhose. This woman. She was becoming his rock. “You took him shopping just a couple of days ago. He didn’t get it then?”
“I guess he forgot to put it on his list. Or forgot to check his list. I don’t know. I’m sorry. What can I do? What do you need me to do?”
It was noon and they were at the house on Mulberry Street. He’d called her from the ranch house this morning after getting a message from Massey about a problem with the kitchen tile. She’d said she’d handle it, and they’d hung up, and those words had stuck with Casper all morning.
This was his house to handle. He didn’t care that she held an equal share of the equity.
So he’d come to town to run the boatload of errands he and the boys had let slide, stopping at the bank to tell her he’d deal with the tile and Massey. That was when she’d handed him the phone she’d taken off his dresser, and told him it was her lunch hour and she was coming, too.
His rock, but still bossy. “He must’ve taken off right after I did. Why didn’t he just ask me to pick it up? He knew I’d be in town.”
“He forgot or he wanted to surprise you.”
“I could do without this kind of surprise.”
She stepped into him then, her arms coming around him gently, the weight of her head against his chest like a blanket covering his heart. She wrapped him up and warmed him with her hands at his back and her legs braided with his, their feet slow dancing without moving a step.
He closed his eyes and just held her, melting into the fit of her, the rightness of it, the comfort he found in her, the perfect sense of being. He kissed the top of her head, lingered there, breathed her in, and waited as long as he could to exhale.
“I’ve got to go.”
She pulled back, looked up at him, her eyes damp with his pain. “To the jail? Or to a lawyer?”
Like he could afford a lawyer. “The jail, I guess. Then a lawyer.”
“You want me to call Darcy?”
“No. Not Darcy.” Dax would whip the skin from his hide.
“Well, her father’s not practicing anymore.”
“Her brother is.”
That brought him an arched brow. “You’re going to Greg?”
Casper thought back to the morning he’d talked to the other man in the Blackbird Diner. Thought back to the secrets Greg had kept. “Yeah.”
“Whatever for?”
“He’s a lawyer.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Because I don’t know him and he doesn’t know me and I am not in the mood to deal with any Campbell drama.”
“Darcy does not do drama.”
“I wasn’t talking about Darcy.” When she mouthed a silent, “Oh,” he said, “I’m going to the jail. Then I’m going to see Greg. Can you take care of the tile and granite crap with John?”
“Of course,” she said. “Anything,” she added, her voice so soft and caring he wanted to face-punch himself for barking at her.
“Faith—”
“Casper, go. Call me if you need me.”
Was she kidding? He cupped the back of her head and brought her to him, whispering into her hair, “I’ll always need you.”
Those words came back as he gunned it through the short drive from Mulberry Street to Main. She hadn’t responded except to smile, and to draw her palm along his cheek, her fingers to his lips before she brought them to her own.
He meant them, those words, but it wasn’t the need of a burden. He didn’t need her to do for him, or fix things for him, to make things right when he didn’t have means. He needed her, and the way things didn’t feel as daunting when she was there.
Walking into the sheriff’s substation ten minutes later brought back memories of sleeping off more than a few drunks in one or the other of the two puke-colored cells. He raised a hand in greeting to Becky Dixon who pointed him toward Ned Orleans’s desk while she dispatched another officer to an accident scene.
“Sheriff,” Casper said, pushing through the waist-high gate from the open reception area into the sleepy hub. He nodded at the sheriff, tamped down the wave of dread rising to choke him. “Can I have a word with Clay?”
“You can,” the other man said, his chair squeaking as he leaned forward. “After you and I have a conversation.”
“About?”
Ned gestured toward the chair at the side of his desk, waited until Casper gingerly sat. “Who this kid is, where he came from.”
“What has he told you?”
“Not much except to call you.”
So the sheriff didn’t know about New Mexico, or Clay being a runaway, or Casper harboring him with full knowledge. He supposed that was a relief, though his gut wasn’t feeling it. ’Course that could’ve been his ribs. “Thanks for doing that. Now what do I need to do to get him out of here?”
“Not so fast. That conversation, remember?”
“Fine. Let’s talk.”
“I’m assuming you won’t be pressing charges for him stealing your truck—”
“Borrowed. He didn’t steal anything from me.”
“There’s still the issue of him having no license or ID and being underage, which I’m assuming based on what I can see. And he did steal the spice bottle from Nathan’s. I’m also going to guess he’s Kendall Sheppard’s and Arwen Poole’s thief. Meaning I need to have a word with his parents or his guardians or whoever he belongs to.”
“He belongs to me. With me. He’s the son of a friend of mine. From out of town,” he said, figuring truth and evasion would work in his favor better than lies.
“Then I need to talk to this…friend. His mother, I imagine? Can I get a name and a number? Or an address?”
Jesus H. This Law & Order shit was what happened when a cop had too much time on his hands and too few tickets to write. “She’s…unavailable. That’s why he’s staying with me for now.”
Ned leaned back in his chair, his hands laced behind his head. “What about the rest of his family? Someone who can vouch for him.”
Because Casper vouching for him wasn’t good enough? Bracing his
arms on his knees, he worried his hat in his hands. “There is no other family, Sheriff. That’s why he’s staying with me. I can vouch for him.”
Ned bobbed his head. “There’s still the matter of his shoplifting. And whether or not Nathan’s is going to press charges—”
“Over a five-dollar jar of some spice?”
“It could’ve been a penny candy. Or a ten-dollar paperback. Or two dollars’ worth of soda. Stealing is stealing, my friend.”
They were not friends. “I’ll settle things with Nathan’s. And with Kendall and Arwen.” Kendall had been taken care of, thanks to Faith, but he’d still go by and make sure she knew Clay would be buying the rest of his books brand new. “And if you’re going to fine him or press charges for his driving without a license, I’ll see that he gets to court or whatever. Now, can I talk to him?”
The sheriff took his sweet time making up his mind, getting to his feet, leading Casper to the rear of the small building. He stopped at the doorway separating the cells from the office, pushing it open after he’d unlocked it and gesturing for Casper to walk through.
He did, the heavy door clanging shut and locking behind him. He blew out a suffocating breath and looked into the cell on his right. Clay sat on the built-in bench, his legs out in front of him crossed at the ankle, his head against the cinder-block wall, his eyes closed.
“Catching up on your sleep?”
“Nothing else to do.”
So smart-ass was how it was going to be. “What were you thinking? I gave you money.”
“I spent it. You said you liked the chili. That you could eat it every day.”
“I didn’t want you to steal the ingredients.”
“It’s just a jar of cumin. Not a big deal.”
“It’s not just a jar of cumin. It’s also a book. And bottles of Coke. And who the hell knows what kind of trail you left between here and Albuquerque.”
“Like I said. It’s not a big deal.”
Fuck this disrespectful…“It goddamn well is a big deal. I don’t know what Angie taught you—”
Clay burst up off the bench and rushed the bars, grabbing hold and shaking, though the only thing he shook was himself. His eyes were wide and red and wet, and as angry as they were scared. “My mother didn’t teach me shit, okay? She was too busy shooting herself full of heroin and fucking every cowboy who came to town.”
